Like most teenagers, Brad Geersen has a healthy appetite. The 19-year-old can hoover up a Subway roll in moments.
He doesn’t. He savours every bite. You’d understand why if you knew how long he had to work to afford one.
The 19-year-old earns $3.31 an hour. In a standard three-hour shift, he makes just enough to afford a six-inch honey mustard leg-ham sub, his go-to order.
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It is just as well he has simple tastes, because more exotic options, such as sweet onion teriyaki chicken, are financial pipe dreams. Don’t even think about pairing the sub with a Coke and a cookie.
Foot-long? Tell him he is dreaming.
Brad is certainly doing his bit to fight inflation.
His employer, a retail business, is not breaking the law by paying him the paltry sum because Brad is covered by the supported wage system, a framework that can allow eligible workers with disability to be paid below award rates.
Brad contracted meningitis as a child, which resulted in a brain injury. His family says he performs his job — sorting clothes and hanging them on racks — as well as other workers, yet he is paid about one-eighth of the national minimum wage.
Brad has become a focal point for a growing push to reform the so-called supported wage system.
Under that framework, a worker assessed as having half the ability to do a job can be paid half the relevant minimum award rate. The system has a noble aim — to give opportunity and purpose to people who might otherwise rely on welfare — but there are growing concerns that some employers are taking the piss.
The Perth teenager has been in the national press in recent days after politicians came under pressure to review the miserly wages.
His father, Rob, says he spent eight months applying for jobs before turning to supported employment.
He knew his son would probably not receive the full minimum wage, but $3.31 an hour was a shock.
“He pretty much performs the job as well as anyone,” Rob told The Nightly.
“There’s a review system under which his productivity is assessed sometime between three to six months and we fully expect he will move to a higher wage.”
“That’s fine,” Rob said. “But what about all the time he was earning next to nothing and it costs him more to go to work than he earned?
“There’s no legal requirement to back pay one cent for work performed prior.”
The Geersens, including Brad, understand that reducing wages to make a job commercially viable can make sense for workers who may not be able to otherwise compete in the open market.
“Work matters,” Rob said. “We wanted Brad to work when he left school. We didn’t want him on welfare or sitting at home.”
Employment offers routine, social connection, skills, confidence and a reason to get up in the morning. Those things should not be dismissed.
But neither should the payslip. A job is not automatically dignified because somebody calls it inclusive.
While investigating the system, the Geersens came to believe it was too loose.
After one job interview and unpaid work trial, the family says the provider for that one-day trial received more than Brad could earn in the next five months.
The Geersen family says Brad’s NDIS plan was charged more than $1700 for one-on-one “employment support” linked to 15.5 hours of paid work.
Brad’s gross pay for that period was $51.30 which means the “support” charge was about 34 times the teenager’s gross pay with the family believing the level of support being provided and charged far in excess of what is actually required.
If the goal is participation and independence the system is broken. The person at the centre of the arrangement — the young man doing the work — is the least rewarded.
The issue has been taken up by Perth MP Patrick Gorman, who has asked Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek to consider the family’s experience.
The Federal Government says it wants people with disability to have choice, meaningful work and higher wages. It also says it is committed to creating pathways to open employment.
The disability royal commission provided a very clear road map but MPs seem to have lost their way.
The commission recommended a scheme guaranteeing workers with disability at least half the minimum wage, with the government to meet the difference, followed by a pathway to full wage parity by 2034. Half the current national minimum wage of $26.44 is $13.22 an hour. It is hardly extravagant.
Brad could spoil himself with the occasional sweet onion teriyaki chicken sub after an hour of work, rather than five.
